[extropy-chat] Security as Theatre

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:
> From:
> http://www.idlewords.com/2004/01/security_as_theater.htm
> 
> <begin quote>
> "Unfortunately, our Homeland Security Bureau has become obsessed with
> collecting as much information as it can, with little thought to how
> to
> use it. It is ossifying into a bureaucracy that would make the
> Austro-Hungarian Empire proud. And it's making many visitors' first
> impression of America one of fear, incompetence, and a general
> disrespect for human dignity. If irony hadn't been declared dead
> after
> September 11, this might be one promising place to look for it."
> <end quote>
> 
> and so true!
> 
> Visitors/residents traveling to EU are beginning to be tormented by
> same Security Theatre, however. 

I am sorry, Amara, but this is ludicrous. I've travelled to europe
enough to remember the machine gun toting soldiers all over the airport
terminals. I remember having to wait in line along a wall for the
chance to claim my baggage just before it was loaded, and I remember
opening my baggage for the inspector while a soldier held a machine gun
pointed at me from two feet away. I remember seeing armored personnel
carriers on city streets regularly around europe, and I remember
warnings to Americans about getting kidnapped by various radical
leftist groups. I remember every car anyone in my family ever rented in
europe being broken into and the contents stolen.

Don't talk to me about security theater in the US. Europe invented it.

=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..."
                                       - Mike Lorrey
Do not label me, I am an ism of one...
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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